Fifty years ago, historian Lynn White Jr. presented and published a highly influential paper, explaining the intellectual and philosophical roots of our environmental crisis. Current debates in conservation make White’s paper as important now as it was in 1966.

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By Michael Paul Nelson, Oregon State University and Thomas J. Sauer, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service

Fifty years ago this month, at the
133rd annual meeting of the AAAS held in Washington DC, a
fifty-nine-year old historian of medieval science and technology dropped an
intellectual bomb, sending jarring reverberations still felt
today. On the evening of December 26th, 1966, Lynn White Jr. climbed
the steps to the stage and took his place behind the podium. His address was
published as “The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” in March of 1967 (1). Within just a few years of its
publication, the article was already considered a ‘classic;’ and over time it
would elicit dozens of responses, be frequently reprinted in textbooks, and
become standard reading in a wide array of university environmental courses.

In his essay, and later in a follow
up essay entitled “Continuing the Conversation” (2), White conveyed a deceptively simple yet profound message. Our
current environmental crisis, he argued, is the result, not simply of our
technological ability to impact and degrade the environment. Rather, our
environmental crisis is first and foremost the product of our Western
worldview. That is, our problem is fundamentally philosophical or ideological:
we bring our ideas about the world into existence, ideas about what humans are,
what the world is, and how the human and the non-human world ought to interact.
To put it simply, and in White’s words, “What people do about their ecology
depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them”
(1). Until we “think about
fundamentals,” “clarify our thinking,” “rethink our axioms,” White said, we
will not adequately address our environmental crisis.

Though White focused his critique on
our interpretation of the human/nature relationship as manifest specifically in
the Judeo-Christian tradition, his point was more foundational. This was a
challenging message in part because it ran so contrary to what so many
believed. If our problems are primarily philosophical, they are not primarily
scientific, or technological, or political, or economic. Those societal
structures are the secondary artifacts of our deeper Western worldview, they do
not touch or change it, they only embody and reinforce it. Our problems are not
going to be solved, therefore, simply by the application of more science and
technology. To many scientists this assertion alone was blasphemy, as they
reflexively assume the starring role in problem-understanding and -solving. Our
problems are instead, White suggested, the expression of a specific Western,
post-Enlightenment worldview that both draws a hard and fast boundary between
humans and nature, and prioritized humans over nature at all turns. A failure
to alter that worldview is a failure to address the roots of our environmental
problems.

To be clear, it is not that
technological innovation and scientific understanding are unimportant, not at
all. A culture maintaining an appropriate relationship with nature will
certainly create and evaluate beautiful and novel technologies consistent with
this novel worldview. A society caring about and for the world will seek to
understand the conditions of that world as a way to express their care. But
without the tether of a new worldview, White agued, our technologies and
sciences will simply revolve around the worldview that gave rise to our
environmental crisis in the first place.

And here we are, half a century from
that evening in Washington, DC. The signals could not be more mixed. There are certainly
many signs of an emerging post-Modern worldview paralleling White’s own
nomination of Saint Francis’ non-anthropocentric teachings as a way forward.
But the dance toward a new worldview seems to be, at best, more two-step than
waltz.

Recently, for example, some well
known conservation leaders have referred to discussions about the philosophical
and ethical foundations of conservation as “silly arguments that are diverting
attention from the real business” (3),
the real business being “a stronger focus on synthesizing and expanding the
evidence base that can identify what works and what fails in conservation so
that we can move from philosophical debates to rigorous assessments of the
effectiveness of actions” (4). They
speak as if “what works and what fails” can be judged without reference to our
fundamental philosophies and ethics. Conservation leaders have ridiculed those
who take a principled non-anthropocentric stand, or anything other than a
pragmatic position (which always favors and therefore perpetuates the worldview
de jour). Dismissing some
conservationists for their “moral certitude,” they claim to “find it dispiriting…unproductive
and ultimately self-defeating…to have to argue with other conservation
biologists over” ideological matters. “The reality of conservation practice,”
they assert, “is too complex and nuanced for [such] moral conviction” (5).

We again flirt precariously and unabashedly
with a renewed commitment to anthropocentrism with our focus on ecosystems
services (to humans) as a way to articulate value in the natural world.
Powerful voices still seem to believe that we can leave intact the same
worldview that created our environmental problems and simply tinker around the
edges, working to invent new applications of technologies and politics built on
new justifications, but not altering our basic belief structure. As if
anticipating a future trend in a dangerous direction, White warned us
repeatedly that we are not going to simply technologize our way out of our
current environmental crisis. He wrote, “we shall continue to have a worsening
ecological crisis until we reject the [Western] axiom that nature has no reason
for existence save to serve [humans]” (1).

And there is White, telling us again
and again, that though the “man-nature dualism is deep-rooted in us…[u]ntil it
is eradicated not only from our minds but also from our emotions, we shall
doubtless be unable to make fundamental changes in our attitudes and actions
affecting ecology.” What we need, White argued, is instead a philosophy that is
“a viable equivalent to animism” (2),
a philosophy and corresponding ethic affirming the intrinsic value of nature,
and rejecting the human/nature dualism that permits hubris and anthropocentrism
to emerge in the first place. White steadfastly warned us away from assuming
that an enlightened prudential ethic – where we recognize that our well being
is dependent upon nature – is a suitable replacement for the new philosophy and
ethics we so desperately need in the future we face. Our old worldview created
our problems, only a fool would assume a simple reapplication of that same worldview
would also solve our problems.

In 1987, twenty years after the
publication of his article, Lynn White, Jr. died of heart failure. His message
is now fifty years old. But we need to hear it again, today, right now, more
than ever. Humans, White pointed out, “commit their lives to what they consider
good” (2). When, and if, the world in
its entirety becomes good itself – not just good for us – we will glimpse a new
path forward.

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